Playing God
by Shocky
Summary: MOTHER3. A glimpse into what goes on at the Chimera Labs. Not for the faint of heart.


Day after day the interior of the Chimera Lab was filled with the echoes of anguished, almost human cries and howls of pain and torment. The sound alone was haunting enough, but if one were to stop turning a blind eye to their surroundings, the scene would be even more horrifying.

Cages upon cages filled the specimen room, each of them packed with every kind of creature that could be found on the Nowhere Islands, whether they be wildlife, livestock, or even missing pets. Each of them malnourished and sick from wallowing in their own filth for so long, cage madness driving them to pace endlessly - if they even had the room to do that. Many of them were missing eyes, ears, and tails, either by their own work or due to a cagemate's stress, and those with fur had it matted to their face from unhealthy seepage from their eyes or noses. Day by day more of the animals would lay down to finally let themselves die, but even those that did weren't granted the sweet mercy of a final rest.

The pig-faced men and their white-coated companions came in every hour, picking subjects seemingly at random, dead or alive. They took no care in how they handled the animals, often opting to grab them by the tail or hind leg and forcefully shoving the unwanted specimens against the back of the cages. The few animals who were daring - or desperate - enough to attack their captors were flung across the room, kicked and jabbed at with sharp metal sticks that sent hundreds of volts of electricity jolting through their bodies.

The operating rooms made for an even worse sight. The tables were covered in beasts; the living bound tight by leather straps, the dead strewn here and there. Only few of them were in one piece, and only because they were still waiting their turn. The men in white coats poked and prodded with their shiny tools of torture, making small incisions here or plucking out an organ there or inserting wires where deemed necessary.

One table in particular displayed severed heads of all sorts, especially those of an avian nature. Despite lacking a body the heads were well aware of their morbid surroundings, being kept alive by a complex device that kept oxygen-rich blood pumping to and from their brains. The same was being done to their bodies, if only to keep rigor mortis from setting in before a different head or spare mechanical part could be attached, just to see what the end result could be used for.

Some animals were lucky enough to keep most of their own bodies intact. Instead it was their brains that were experimented on, to be made bigger and more intelligent. There was no anaesthetic given before cutting through the skulls of the first batch (a group of gophers), and the various points of the brain stimulated during the procedure caused the subject to experience feelings of pain throughout the entire body, sudden blackouts, or sudden nerve spasms, but still the operations continued. The utter carelessness of these experiments caused the opposite of the desired result: the gophers became effectively braindead, giving delayed, disoriented reactions to stimuli if they were even able to react at all. When asked to name the failed project, the head scientist threw his hands up in frustration and said, "Whatever."

They were much more careful when handling exposed pig's brains.

One room of interest was the one used speicifically for putting together the perfect creature - the "Ultimate" Chimera. This one had only one enormous operating table, and on it lay something unlike any single creature the planet had ever seen. It was both organic and mechanical, wires and circuit boards and steel rods peeking out from the half-finished pink torso, as did a beating heart and a set of lungs that expanded and contracted with every breath. Veins entertwined with the circuitry, although there was no brain to carry oxygen to yet.

The men in white coats worked tirelessly on this special project, using the knowledge they gained from their daily experiments to perfect the new creature and adding any parts that looked more useful on their chimera than on the animals naturally born with them.

One pig-faced man held a struggling bat down with one hand, using the other to carefully pluck its wings from its sockets with a pair of pliers. He held the wingless rat-like creature up after he finished, watching it struggle weakly in his grip. It was pitiful. "Do you think... sometimes, what we do here is wrong?"

One of the white-coats snatched the helpless animal and dropped it, still squirming, into a trash can. "Do you think we have a choice?"

It was necessary that the pig-faced men and white-coats chose to ignore the horrors within the lab. It was a natural self-defense against what might otherwise drive them insane. Occasionally questions would be raised, but the culprit was immediately hushed, not only to save their jobs (and lives) but to keep from having to think about this hellish, moral-less place.


End file.
